WHEN QUIET GETS UNCOMFORTABLE John Mark Comer
It is pitch-black. I’ m suspended over a wiremesh floor, floating in the dark. My ears are lightly ringing, and I have a faint headache.
All I can hear is my breath.
I’ ve come north to visit what is purportedly the“ quietest place on earth,” the anechoic chamber at the Microsoft offices outside Seattle.( Anechoic is a sciencey word meaning“ no echo.”) It’ s essentially a floating box, twenty-one feet square, designed to dampen all noise.
All noise.
It is eerily silent in here.
A rock concert is 120 decibels, hence the temporary tinnitus in your ears the next morning. A friendly conversation averages around 60 decibels; a quiet library, 40; an illicit whisper in said library, 30.
The quietest natural place on earth is roughly 20 dB. This chamber is-20.
It’ s quiet enough for me to hear the sound of my internal organs rubbing against one another. I can hear when my eyelids open and close. When I bend my neck, I can hear the cartilage from my spine grate down my vertebrae, which is not a good feeling.
The lead designer of this chamber was
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